Information Sciences and Technology

Information Sciences and Technology

Penn State researchers have developed an automated system that can determine which "J. Smith" is authoring papers on computer science -- the one who teaches at Penn State or the one who teaches at M.I.T -- as well as whether "J. Smith" is John Smith, Jane Smith, Joanna L. Smith or James H. Smith. The system, which retrieves classes of authors with similar names, considers not just names in making its determination but also other information such as co-authors, dates of publications, citations and keywords. When tested with 3,355 academic papers written by 490 authors, the system correctly identified authors 90.6 percent of the time.

Just as clouds block the sun, they interfere with laser communications systems, but Penn State researchers are using a combination of computational methods to find the silver lining and punch through the clouds. "Radio frequency communications are generally reliable and well understood, but cannot support emerging data rate needs unless they use a large portion of the radio spectrum," said Mohsen Kavehrad, the W. L. Weiss professor of electrical engineering and director, Penn State Center for Information and Communications Technology Research. "Free space optical communications offer enormous data rates but operate much more at the mercy of the environment."

Penn State researchers have "taught" computers how to interpret images using a vocabulary of up to 330 English words, so that a computer can describe a photograph of two polo players, for instance, as "sport," "people," "horse," "polo." The new system, which can automatically annotate entire online collections of photographs as they are uploaded, means significant time-savings for the millions of Internet users who now manually tag or identify their images. It also facilitates retrieval of images through the use of search terms, said James Wang, associate professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, and one of the technology's two inventors.

Penn State researchers have developed a new algorithm which enables cell-phone users to fetch data from music to TV shows as quickly as feasible with minimal channel switches. With the computing technique, mobile devices can pick up data that may have been "missed" when first broadcast, thereby alleviating the wait for subsequent broadcast cycles. Because it minimizes channel switching, the new algorithm also reduces power use, thereby extending battery life. "Currently, mobile devices retrieve broadcast data similar to how TV viewers watch TV shows simultaneously broadcast-by switching channels," said Prasenjit Mitra, assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). "But with our algorithm, cell-phone users don't have to wait for fewer broadcast cycles to retrieve the data as the mobile device can pick up objects broadcast across parallel air channels." The researchers are continuing to explore algorithms for mobile data retrieval and anticipate developing additional ones that will even further reduce power consumption and time, Mitra said.

Information technology executives and senior managers can explore strategies that optimize IT investments for enterprise-wide business needs at a unique executive education program hosted by Penn State University Sept. 11-15.

Beauty is no longer just in the eye of the beholder-computers "taught" to evaluate photographs can match people's aesthetic judgments of "beautiful" or "pretty" more than 70 percent of the time, according to Penn State researchers. The researchers have developed a computational-aesthetics software that enables computers to single out aesthetically pleasing photographs based on more than a dozen visual features. The software holds promise for Web users who, when searching for images, might want to hone in on what's "best" rather than browsing through thousands of returned images. It also has potential application for digital cameras. The software could inform photographers that they need to improve shot composition before they snap a picture, the researchers said. "The software trains computers to judge photographs on 56 different visual features such as color saturation, exposure and composition," said James Wang, assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). "On average, if people think something is a 'good' picture, our computer thinks so, too."

The diversity of today's American workforce challenges information-technology organizations that have "one-size-fits-all" policies, and nowhere is that more evident than with women employees, says a Penn State researcher.

Penn State researchers have developed software that allows databases to "talk to each other" automatically without compromising the security of the data and metadata because the queries, data communicated and other information are encrypted. The Privacy-preserving Access Control Toolkit (PACT) acts like a filter but is resilient to eavesdropping or other attacks because of the encryption. "The software automatically regulates access to data, so some information can be exchanged while other data remains confidential and private," said Prasenjit Mitra, assistant professor of information sciences and technology and member of the research team that developed the software. "Often when we implement security, we decide not to give access to data. This tool preserves security while allowing permitted access." Organizations like government agencies, non-profits and corporations frequently need to access data belonging to other organizations. But sharing data is difficult because databases are typically constructed using different terms or vocabularies.

Consumers who go to multiple search engines looking for the best prices or products may be spending more time than needed, according to a Penn State researcher. In a recent study, Jim Jansen discovered no significant difference in the effectiveness of five popular search engines in helping consumers find what they were looking for. "What we learned is that there is little benefit for consumers who occasionally shop online to visit various search engines for product comparisons as those engines basically return nearly identical results in terms of effectiveness," said Jansen, assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). The study also indicated that sponsored links -- those that are paid for by businesses -- are no more relevant to consumers than organic or non-sponsored links -- those returned automatically by a search engine's algorithms. But Jansen said some advantage to using niche search engines designed for e-commerce can be gained for those consumers who primarily do online shopping.

"Play" or back-and-forth dialogue between users and designers can lead to IT systems that are more responsive to the subtleties and ambiguities of users' different perspectives, say Penn State researchers. Because it makes users and designers teammates during the development process, the "play" model also can reduce the multiple upgrades and updates that plague enterprise-wide or "Newspeak" solutions, says Frederico Fonseca, assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). Too often, system designers aim for the "killer application" with the assumption that it will work well for every user and address every business or organizational need. But users are not homogeneous, and enterprise-wide or "Newspeak" solutions don't take into account users' different perspectives. The consequence: updates and upgrades are needed. "For example, departments in banks interpret the term 'loan date' differently," Fonseca said. "One department views it as the date when the loan was applied for, another when the loan was approved and yet another when the money was released."

Computers and the Internet have been billed as enabling new ways of doing business, but in the residential real estate industry, people's expanded access to information hasn't rendered the real estate agent a relic, says a Penn State researcher. "The expectation was that real estate agents would go away once consumers could see all the home listing information, but the number of real estate agents has increased, not decreased, in the last 10 years," says Steve Sawyer, associate professor in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). So has the number of people involved in real-estate transactions--contrary to the assumption that information technologies would streamline and simplify the transaction process. Instead, the amount of relevant information about real estate has exploded, requiring more people and more specialized professionals to be involved in supporting, understanding and processing that information.

At major universities across the nation, a revolution is under way in teaching and learning in information technology. Old departmental silos are toppling, discipline lines are being crossed, and a whole new breed of information school -- "i-school" -- is emerging. In response, more than 250 deans, faculty members and students from across the country are converging at Penn State Sept. 28-30 for the First Conference of the i-School Community. Representatives from 18 i-schools will seek a common understanding of what makes the i-schools unique, what they offer society, and the challenges they face. "Dramatic change has occurred in how many universities conceive information technology education," said James B. Thomas, dean of Penn State's School of Information Sciences and Technology. "Research and curricula are being crafted through the blending of different fields and disciplines to inspire new solutions for our society." The emergence of the i-schools has not gone unnoticed by savvy employers, who are looking for leadership and problem-solving abilities, along with technology skills from 21st century graduates. As well, many millions of dollars have gone to i-school researchers as they attack multifaceted problems associated with information and technology in our society.

The Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) is offering faculty-led student IT consulting teams to corporations and non-profit organizations through its new IST Consulting Solutions Program.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.2-million grant to researchers in the Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and the University of Kansas to enhance and improve the CiteSeer academic search engine which receives more than 1 million hits a day and is heavily indexed by Google and Yahoo!. Since its launch in 1997, CiteSeer has provided the public with access to more than 700,000 documents in computer and information sciences. The Next Generation CiteSeer will archive more documents, allow new types of searching, offer CiteSeer as a Web service, include personalized recommendations and searches, and permit synchronous live-object collaboration. Lee Giles, the David Reese Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, is the principal investigator for the NSF Computing Research Infrastructure Collaborative Grant. Jack Carroll, the Edward M. Frymoyer Professor of Information Sciences and Technology; Jim Jansen, assistant professor of information sciences and technology; and Susan Gauch, University of Kansas, are co-investigators.

Human teams aided by a software system can make decisions more accurately and quickly in time-stressed situations than teams of just people, according to the Penn State researchers who developed the new software. The researchers tested their software in a military command-and-control simulation which involved intelligence gathering, logistics and force protection.